Aloka's Adventures

Juniper's World

2011-11-27T10:09:00.000-08:00

Just hangin' out on my potty, wearin' my sisters shoes, spyin' on the neighbors....

finally some pics!

2011-06-11T14:10:00.000-07:00

Ok, some very overdue posts are being composed right now, but in the meantime... some pics! These are from just a couple days ago. Aloka got a bob a few weeks ago, so she's sporting a new look. She actually does this hairdo pretty much every summer i think!

Here she is on our swing in our yard:

We often make berries and pink whipped cream... the girls love it.

Our year so far

2011-02-14T18:57:00.000-08:00

It's been a hard few weeks. It's been a particularly harsh cold/flu season, and there was a very nasty flu going around that we all caught. Aloka got it first a few weeks ago, she had a fever for 5 days, but then bounced right back. Then I got it not long after and was down for 7 days with fever and another week and a half with respiratory issues and total exhaustion (still dealing with that). During the time I caught it, Richard was on vacation from work to try and install our floors, but he ended up being the nurse. Then Junie caught it when i was still sick, and then Richard. He was able to fight it pretty good, and only had it for a couple days. Needless to say, it's been a rough month!

But, something fun to report which i think i completely forgot to mention, is that Aloka got her ears pierced! It was just after Xmas, and for Valentines Day I gave her some beautiful dangly heart earrings and she took our her first earrings for the first time today to put on her new ones. It was very exciting and I'll post some pics of them soon (have to take them first). But in the meantime, here are some pics of the snow at our house, and Aloka skiing. She is in a XCountry ski class that she is loving! And it's only 5 minutes from our house, bonus!

This is from over a month ago. There's more now, can you believe it??

Junie bug, hugging a flower Aloka made for her out of tissue paper

Aloka at ski school!

Toothless Smile!

2011-01-02T11:31:00.002-08:00

Missing her two front teeth, and two bottoms, makes for a pretty cute smile.

well, that only took me 6 months

2010-12-26T15:14:00.011-08:00

it's the day after Christmas and i'm now sitting down to finish this birthday post.
SO, here's how the day went. If i can remember. ha.

We sent out these fun and mysterious invitations in a brown manila envelope marked with the words "TOP SECRET" and addressed to Agent (enter name here). They looked really fun, and then inside, i typed up an official looking letter from a detective agency personalized to each child. There was also a smaller card inside each envelope, with a secret password that each party guest had to decode.
It was the word "ETALOCOHC" Can you decode it?

We had "CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS" tape up all over the outside of the house, and inside I made a bunch of black question marks that we stunk to the windows. When each guest arrived and told me the decoded password, they gained entry. We gave them an ID badge with their character name on it (each person was a character from one of the Nancy Drew books, and Aloka was of course Nancy Drew). Then, on their badge, they went to a station to draw a picture of themselves on the badge. They also got fingerprinted (on a separate fingerprint card), and we put the badge in a plastic sleeve which could hang around the party guests neck. It was really fun, and the kids just loved it.

After everyone had arrived, I took everyone in groups to Aloka's room, which was set up with laser beams all over in a web (string!) and the kids had to get from one end of the room to the other to get their "spy kits". Anyone seen the movie Entrapment"? This was not easy, i have to say! There were little bells tied to the string every couple feet, and they had to try not to jingle them. I couldn't even do it, and it was fun seeing all the different techniques the kids tried out! I was at the other end handing them their spy kits, which consisted of:

A real magnifying glass
A small notepad and pencil
A fake nose/mustache disguise
A whoopie cushion (because every spy needs one)
Some gold foiled chocolate coins (spy payment)
Some very realistic pebbles that were actually chocolate (to trick unsuspecting people!)
A secret code key
and of course.... the case file, with the list of suspects and their motives. (It looks bigger in the picture. It was small, about 4" x 3")

The mystery was called "The Curious Case of the Kidnapped Cake"
The suspects listed with their respective motives, were (as seen in the case file):

We sat all the kids around in a circle once everyone had their spy kits and I explained that something horrible had happened. Aloka's birthday cake had gone missing!
I showed them right where it was in the kitchen before it suddenly disappeared. Then we noticed that on the counter where the cake had been sitting, there was a pile of puzzle pieces! Next to the pieces was a clear plastic film with some lines and footprints in black drawn on it. The children assembled the puzzle, and saw this:

Then they placed the clear plastic sheet on top of it to reveal this:

(this was all the artistic genius of Josh!)

Once the kids figured out that it spelled JOSH, they questioned him; the FIRST suspect!

He explained that he was just trying to clean up the area and he put the cake in a large cooler, and put it over by the door and now it's gone! But he also said he noticed some weird red goo on the bottom of the cooler.
The kids went to the door, and lo and behold, there was a trail of red goo (it was jello!) all the way out the door, down the steps and out to the back pumphouse. We all went for a little walk, hot on the trail of red goo. It was tricky because there were only little blobs of it here and there. But it finally led us to the next stop (pump house). Aloka opened the door to the dark pumphouse, and inside were glow in the dark letters on the wall that spelled

RICHARD

The kids had an 'aha' moment and went to question Richard. He explained that he was just tidying up and didn't realize the cooler had the cake in it. Then I noticed something on the ground next to the pump house door; a CLUE! The kids had their magnifying glasses out, and examined what appeared to be a small button.
I suggested they see if the button matched any of the suspects clothing, and sure enough, Kara was missing a button on her shirt! The plot thickens!

Kara explained that she saw the cooler, and needed something to sit on, so she dragged it over to the yard, next to a large larch tree.

The kids ran off to find the tree, but instead of finding the cooler and after much searching, they found a crumpled up note with a strange code on it, under a rock. They unfolded it, to find this note:

Time to whip out their decoder keys from their spy kits!

After a few minutes of parents helping some and other clever kids doing it themselves, it was determined that the note said:

WHO LOVES CAKE? JEN

They all found Jen, who told them she needed something to sit on by the fire pit, and had dragged it over there. But now it's gone! We went and looked around the fire pit, and still no cooler.
But what the kids did find, sitting on a little platter were brownies cut into 1 inch squares. Each brownie square had a letter on it but it didn't spell anything, that is, until someone realized the letters were jumbled! They rearranged the letters which spelled:

MELISSA

They questioned Melissa, who said she had put her little brownies out to cool off, but she hadn't noticed a cooler at all! The children started looking around, confused, and with a little help from the adults, they noticed some drag marks in the dirt, and some big bear prints! They followed the trail into the woods, and that's where they found the missing cooler!!! And a funny little unplanned event that happened, was when they saw the cooler, there was a neighbors dog standing right next to it looking guilty. Aloka was nervous that a bear actually took her cake, and felt a lot better that it could have been a dog! ha ha!

The cake was nestled safely inside, and we all brought it into the house, and enjoyed a lovely platter of sub sandwiches, snacks, and cake and ice cream! Then we opened presents, and Aloka got some fabulous gifts; craft kits, jewelry, a wonderful organic baking kit to make cupcakes, and all kinds of great and thoughtful gifts. Honestly, it was probably the best party I've ever been too!

Present opening!

A sneak preview of what's coming....

2010-11-04T22:02:00.001-07:00

Yes, i'm finally prioritzing this to get it done! It's been put off because my connection is HORRID when it comes to uploading videos and large portion of the party is in videos, not pictures. (well, and because i'm busier than i think i've ever been in my life with 2 kids and running a business!) It's uploading right now though, and it will probably take a few days with my bandwidth, so stay tuned (this time for real)!

Rose Ceremony Pictures

2010-10-11T15:35:00.000-07:00

Aloka's Grade 8 buddy Jane, giving her a rose

Aloka's teacher, Mr. Lunde, welcoming her on her new journey

Aloka and her funny mind

2010-09-07T17:26:00.001-07:00

Today Aloka said to me "Mama, can i pay you for for taking care of me my whole life?" It was so sweet and touching, and then she handed me a penny! She is so funny and sweet!

Today was the first day of school, Grade 1. She did great, and LOVES it! She has an amazing teacher, named Mr. Lunde, he's 6'2" and fabulous with the children.

There was the Rose Ceremony this morning, which is very *very* moving. The oldest grade in our school is Grade 8, and for this ceremony which is at the beginning and end of each year, the new Grade 8 children walk in with the new Grade 1 children. Each Grade 8 student has two little Grade 1's holding their hand, one on each side. So they parade slowly in, and everyone is dressed in 'festival' attire, which means white. White clothing, white with flowers, etc. The boys have white shirts and dress pants, and the girls have all their fanciest prettiest white dresses.

They go up to the stage, and one by one, Mr Lunde reads the name of each 1st grader, they come up and their respective 8th grader gives them a rose, to welcome them on their journey.

Boo hoo. So sweet, and as we watched and cried, Josh joked that there are boxes of kleenex you can purchase as a Grade 6 fundraiser, ha ha!

Throughout the year, the 1st graders buddy up with their 8th grader friend and they learn things from the older students. It flourishes into a sweet relationship, as the 1st graders so look up to the older kids.

At the end of the year, there is another Rose Ceremony, and the 1st graders give back a rose to their 8th grade mentors, as a gesture of well wishes on their new journey into their next chapter in life and leaving the Waldorf school.

Gonna be bringing more Kleenex for that one!

Nancy Drew Party coming soon, i promise!

2010-08-27T17:08:00.001-07:00

It's on my to do pile, at the top! But in the meantime here are some pics. We've had a very full summer, Aloka attended a camp with the SPCA (like the humane society) and learned all about animals, animal care, bear awareness, and did a million crafts and even did a field trip to a farm.
We also just got back from camping and she caught her first fish! I have videos and pics of that trip, but next up will be her birthday party, soon, i promise!

Oh, and my dad came out for a great visit, there's picture of him too.

Genetics are amazing

2010-07-20T23:19:00.003-07:00

Aloka saw this photo and said "Is that me, Mama? Holding Junie?" No dear, that's me when I was seven. She thought that was pretty cool!

the latest tooth loss!

2010-07-03T20:05:00.004-07:00

I just wrote about Aloka's tooth, and the cool thing she did with it on my other blog (the one i have for my toy store) called "The Meadow". You can pop over to take a look at it here.

Also, the other day, Richard was holding Junie in the kitchen while he was doing something. She started saying "hop, hop, hop!". She says this fairy often actually, so he didn't really pay any attention. She kept saying it though, and he looked up and sure enough, there was a bunny in our yard!

A Moose and a song

2010-06-14T18:49:00.004-07:00

I've been wanting to post some videos for a while, and my connection is always so slow. But I managed to do it the other night, so ta da!
The first is a moose that we saw coming home last week (we were going home, not the moose). This moose was only a few km's from our house, and now there have been meese spottings, so it's probably the same one (or from the same herd?). It was very exciting for the girls!

Second video: Aloka has been watching me watch people performing on YouTube (like that Greyson Clark kid for instance) and she decided she wanted to perform on YouTube also. :) Here's her version of White Coral Bells for your listening enjoyment! Is she going to hate me when she's older or what?

And the last video is just a goofy Aloka and a skunky Junie playing. Again, saving this one for the "gonna show your boyfriend when you're 18" collection.

Waldorf May Fest

2010-06-14T17:57:00.002-07:00

This is Aloka and her friend Avery on the swing at the Waldorf school a couple weeks ago!

Apple Art

2010-05-09T12:38:00.004-07:00

My daughter Aloka loves Apples.
My daughter Aloka loves Snow White.
My daughter Aloka loves Art.

My daughter Aloka loves this picture.

luck?

2010-05-06T22:23:00.002-07:00

Well here's a funny little conversation that Aloka and her dad had the other day, when we were over visiting.

Aloka had chewed on a bunch of hair elastics (yuck and gross) until they were all soggy, and then shoved them into her jeans pockets.
She went up to Josh and said "Daddy, put your hand in my pocket and you have luck!"

Josh said "really??" and stuck his hand right into a soggy hair elastic pocket, and pulled it out with a dramatic and gross "eeeeeeeewwwwwww!"

Aloka was cracking up of course, and with her pointer finger sticking straight up in E.T. Phone Home fashion, she says, "I didn't say it was good luck!"

I think I may be resurfacing!

2010-05-02T17:53:00.003-07:00

But i'm not completely sure yet. It's been 7 weeks now, and my business plan is due tomorrow. eek.
My poor family hasn't seen much of me (quality time that is) as my head has been in my computer morning, noon and night. I've been working until about 1am every night, and I'm really feeling to toll. I also feel like my social life has been put on hold. Actually, everything has been put on hold except for the basic necessities, like feeding my children, putting them to bed, getting Aloka to school in the morning, etc.
But holy cow, you should see my house. I think I need to hire a maid just to get it to a place where I can clean it again, it's so messy.
Richard has been great with certain household things, like keeping the kitchen clean, cooking many of the meals, all while holding down a full-time job AND building the addition to our house. So between the two of us, we're managing. But what i'm really missing is the relaxation, the down time, playing with my kids, watching a movie, having dinner at the table (that's actually not happening because the reno's are infringing on our dining room right now).

I'm just looking forward to this all being done, house and business plan.

So. It's due tomorrow. It's going to be about 100 pages including my appendices. After I turn it in tomorrow, they will get back to me after they review it, with revisions. Then I'll have about 3 weeks to complete and submit revisions, and then it's the final review.
Wish me luck!

And in the meantime, here's a couple photos of my growing children!

Skiing at home

2010-03-24T16:13:00.006-07:00

First of all, I need to apologize for my lack of posting especially lately. I recentely got accepted into the Community Futures Start Smart program which is where they pay me to write my business plan. It's a 10 week program and my plan is due after 8 weeks.
It's incredibly intensive and time consuming. On top of all the research and writing I'm doing, I'm also required to take 10 workshops through the duration of the program, and many of these workshops are all day long.
So, I'm BUSY!! I'm required to work a minimum of 35 hours a week on my business plan, and I'm finding myself in the 40 and 50 hour range, all while taking care of two kids!

And while I'm talking about my business plan, I guess I should mention here that I need to collect at least 50 questionnaires by potential customers, and so far i've only collected 24. If you feel so inspired, it would help me out HUGELY. Click here to go to the survey.

So on with the ski videos! This is just across the street from our house!

This is a really fun ice slide they built at the intersection of Ward and Baker Street, during the Olympic festivities in Nelson:

PACKRAT again.

2010-02-20T11:38:00.006-08:00

This is the second brush with a packrat since our time in Nelson began. I posted about a packrat a few years ago, that had gotten in my car and caused a scene in front of a shop on Baker St, but this packrat is a slightly different scenario.

This packrat found a nice little home somewhere in the rafters of the roof of our house, and was inaccessible to anyone.
It started when Richard actually saw it, and then the next day we were hearing scurrying in our ceiling. It was SO loud, and kept us up at night and woke us up in the morning. We had no idea how we were going to catch it. A live trap at the store was $70 which we couldn't afford, and we asked neighbors and friends if anyone had a live trap.
By now a month had gone by, and we had gotten pretty used to the sound of the packrat living in our house, though it was distressing imagining all the things it was collecting, not to mention using our roof as a toilet.

It finally looked like we might have a lead on a trap, when the packrat made an appearance or two. It seemed to enjoy our storage room, not sure why. All the boxes full of my toy store inventory perhaps?

One night, Richard realized it was there, and managed this amazing feat!

Our Christmas!

2010-01-15T12:34:00.004-08:00

We had the best Christmas ever this year. It was small, and perfect. Josh came over on Xmas eve and brought a feast that he had cooked at home; Honey-d ham with cloves, baked sweet potatoes, pickled beets, roasted onions, and green beans and a creamy mushroom sauce. It was soooo yummy!
We had a lovely evening, and after Aloka was in bed, Santa came! Josh spent the night in Aloka's room which was extra special for her.

The next morning Aloka was up at around 7am (not too bad!) and there were stockings for everyone, and the tree was beautiful and abundant.
The first thing we did was open the stockings. Even Juniper had a little one and she just loved it.

Aloka got all kinds of fun stuff in hers; hair things, nail polish, little games, cool magazines, and lots of chocolate and treats. Oh, and of course, socks. :)
She did great! She didn't get overwhelmed or frenzied with the gift opening. She paid attention to everything she got, and even played during intervals in present opening. Her big present was a new pair of Cross-country skis and boots, and Richard got a new/used pair as well (his broke in half last year!).

Jeanne sent us these very cute little Christmas pajamas from Hanna Andersson, the girls were adorable in them!

After the whole present opening thing, Aloka tried out her new skis.

We've gone tons more since then. We are so lucky to be living in a beautiful ski town with amazing trails right outside our door. Our neighbor is an avid xcountry and downhill skier, and lives next to a huge parcel of Crown Land. He made a huge loop that meanders through trees and meadow, and has a few little hills even. It's SO fun and we've been out there a ton!
Richard and I made the Christmas day feast, a delectable brined organic Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, his famous red cabbage with apples and cloves (this is soooo yum), and cranberry sauce, with a decadent chocolate torte for desert. Oh, and of course christmas cookies!
Josh stayed one more night and then I gave him a ride back home the next morning. It was fabulous!

A sweet little video

2010-01-09T22:03:00.000-08:00

Richard watching Juniper at night for an hour or so, while I put Aloka to bed. Here's a litte clip he filmed the other night... they are always very quiet because Aloka is trying to fall asleep.

And while we're waiting...

2010-01-08T14:13:00.003-08:00

for my Xmas videos to upload (it's been 3 days now)....here are few that somehow were forgotten!

For instance, my amazing 'new' car! It's a 1993 Toyota Lucida (similar to the Previa), it has AWD, two sunroofs, A/C, ABS, CD player, the seats swivel around and fold down into a bed, it's in mint condition and has only 64K on it! It also has a very cool feature they call Sonar, but of course Josh said it's not sonar technology it uses, it's infrared. :)
It has sensors on all corners of the van, plus front and back, and a little picture of the van on my dashboard. When i'm near an object, the corresponding sensor on the picture lights up and beeps (3 types of beeps depending on the closeness of the object)! It's extremely handy for backing up and parallel parking.

It's a Japanese import so it's right-hand drive, which was cake to get used to. Even Richard loves driving it, and was leery about the right-hand drive thing.

no phone

2010-01-06T11:12:00.004-08:00

Ok, I swear all the Christmas pics are coming soon!

But in the meantime, we are dealing with typical mercury retrograde stuff, like our phone not working! Since last Saturday!
Our outside phone line somehow got completely severed by ice or a tree or some other wintery obstacle, and we've been without contact to the outside world, save the internet. (thank goodness we have a satellite or we'd be S.O.L)
I've called the phone company (Telus) a million times raging, fuming, weeping, negotiating (see the 5 stages of grieving) and finally accepting that they are really actually not going to fix our line until January 8th. I hate Telus.
Twice now on two separate calls to them from various friends houses, the phone agent actually asked me for my phone number so they could call us to let us know if there was a date sooner that opened up to do the repair. Seriously??

Josh emailed this me:

Have I mentioned that I hate Telus?

After Eight dinner mints

2009-12-11T11:48:00.003-08:00

In the advent calender that I made for Aloka, I alternate After Eight mints with a hard candy bonbon. Today is the 11th, so she opened the corresponding little envelope. She pulled out the little mint and the activity of the day (Decorate your tree!) and she said "Mama, what are these chocolates called?"

"After Eight's" sweetie, I reply.

She get's that furrowed brow confused look and says "After 10 you mean?"

She's cleverer than I am, it took me a second to realize what she was saying!
Today's the 11th, right!

Advent calenders and sleepovers

2009-12-06T14:01:00.008-08:00

Oh how did a month slip by me? I have so much to post and only one hand (nursing sleeping baby) and not a lot of time. I swear this will pick up again soon!

I've been so busy working on my site www.bumblebeetoys.com amd it's the Christmas season, so it's been crazy. I'm also the class rep for Aloka's class and I'm juggling so much right now.

I have lots, but can't type too much right now...so...pictures are worth a thousand words, right?

The first batch of pics is summer reminiscing. We have hoards and gobs of huckleberries growing on our land, and I still haven't posted those pics:

We picked many many pounds all in all and I made lots of jam, and still have tons in our freezer!

Aloka had her first sleepover last night and she had SO much fun! The two girls get along great (her friend Avie). The mess they made was astounding.

Yes, Aloka painted her face. That's her "cheetah" look.

And lastly, I made an advent Calender for Aloka this year. I found an envelope template online and collected all my papers that i've got laying around. I filled each one with an After Eight mint chocolate wafer and a hard candy, alternating. Then I put a little activity or craft in each one.
So far, it's been a huge hit!

Laying them out and putting the activities in each one. They are written on coloured foil origami paper.

I was given these adorable clothespins, with little felt trees, by Aloka's Kindergarten teacher, Debbie Sunflower!

Aloka loves it!

Democracy vs. Dictatorship

2009-11-06T11:56:00.006-08:00

Has it really been a month?? Time flies by in certain ways. Junie is now 14 months just about. Halloween was last weekend and it was spectacular. I didn't get any photos, unfortunately though...

First we went to the Waldorf Halloween Journey, which as usual was incredible. This year, I coordinated and wrote one of the scenes. There were about 8 scenes, all very magical... A Fallen Star, Grandfather Cedar, the Elf King, Jack Frost, a Pirate (our scene), a Bee Hive with Queen Bee, a Peruvian Folktale, and Grandmother Moon. Each scene told a story with one or two actors, and then gave a gift, symbolizing the story that was told.
Our scene was a Pirate who had been searching for treasure for 150 years and has almost given up. He asks the children to help him and he stands up (he had been sitting on a bench by a campfire) on the bench is a giant red 'x' which he had been sitting on the whole time!
The children loved it, shouting 'It's right there!! It's right there!!"
The bench was actually a chest, which contained lots and lots of gold! (gold painted rocks).

After that, Josh, Richard and I took Aloka trick-or-treating and she had SO much fun! She got tons of candy, and when we got home we divided it into piles; the cow dairy pile (she can't eat) hence the Daddy pile, the Aloka pile, and the "Great Pumpkin" pile, where the majority of it ended up after Josh's was set aside.

So she ended up with a nice small little basket of treats, and then put out the Great Pumpkin's into a basket with a little note and drawing for him/her. (She was wondering if it was a boy or girl)
The Great Pumpkin replaced all her candy with yummy treats (mama, I think the Great Pumpkin shops at the co-op) er... she got peanut-ginger chews, sesame sticks, carob covered almonds, fruit leathers, peanut butter pretzels, a cool little card game and a YOYO!! She was very excited about the yoyo and had been asking for one for a while. That clever Pumpkin.
She was very very happy with her trade.

So, I can't remember if I mentioned our wonderful Thanksgiving we had. We had Josh over and our friend Tony with his daughter Avie (a good friend of Aloka's). I brined a turkey (OH MY GOSH it was amazing, I will never cook a turkey any other way) and Richard made his famous German red cabbage dish with apples and cloves. It was a huge feast, and here's a little clip of all of us hanging out in Aloka's NEW room Richard built in the new addition. Soon we'll post the before and after photos to see the transformation of this home. It started as a teeny little trailer, and now it's a 1200 sq ft house. Aloka's was the first room to be completed, and the bathroom is almost done. Next will be the kitchen, we're just about to hang the cabinets. So, more pictures soon!

Ok, and some very exciting news: Josh and I have officially gotten permanent residence in Canada!!! We're SO excited, and totally relieved. It's over!!
So, yesterday I was talking about how we'll have all the same rights as Canadian Citizens except that Permanent Residents can't vote:
Aloka: What's voting?
Richard: Oh, it's complicated Aloka. Maybe when you're older...
Aloka (slightly distraught): But I'm a curious little child!
Mama: well, say there were 6 kids on the playground and you wanted to make a new rule. You asked everyone whoever likes your new rule, raise their hand, and you count 4. And whoever doesn't like the new rule, raise their hand, and you count 2. The most hands wins. So now there's a new rule. And that's voting.

Later on that night, I was in the bathroom with Aloka getting ready for bed. Juniper was sleeping in our bed (where we all sleep) and I told Aloka we couldn't read our story in our bed like we usually do. We'd read it in her room. She'd didn't like that.

Aloka: Mama, I really want to read a book on the couch instead!
Mama: No, sweetie. Let's read in your room.
Aloka: NO, I want to read on the couch. Hey, mama? How 'bout lets vote.
Mama: Ok, now here's where I'm going to explain the difference between a Democracy and a Dictatorship. In our country, it's called a Democracy, where everyone votes on things. But in some country's, there's a ruler and everyone has to do what that ruler says. In our house, it's a dictatorship. So you need to do what i say!
Aloka: NO. I still want to vote.
Mama (being reasonable): Well, tell me why you want to read on the couch so much?
Aloka: Because it's nice and warm, and cozy, and my room is cold and far away from everyone.
Mama: Ok, so what this is called is a debate. Where you try to convice me of your position.
Aloka: Can we vote again? Everyone raise their hand who wants me to read on the couch!
Richard: (raising hand) It doesn't matter to me, let her read on the couch.
Mama: (smiling and raising hand) Ok Aloka you win. We can read on the couch. Good convincing!

Aloka was very happy.

Here's another video of Aloka in her very messy room, and she totally stuffed herself in a leotard. It was hilarious.

And here's cute little one of Junie. it's amazing with the second, everything Aloka does, Junie imitates. Here, Junie is imitating making her stuffy talk...

And one more funny copy cat clip... Junie copying aloka putting on lotion:

Fall has arrived

2009-10-05T16:06:00.004-07:00

and I'm sad about it. I could have it be summer for another few months! Like, summer, summer, summer, summer....snow!
Actually, I can't really complain. Fall in Nelson is simply beautiful. Sunny and warm days, cool crisp evenings, and leaves turning all the beautiful October colours of golds, oranges, reds. Washington never gets real fall, just grey and wet.
My garden is as beautiful as ever and I just got my last and final hurrah as far as summer colour with this beautiful lily:

We also had Juniper's first birthday! How time flies! We had Josh, Margaret and Emily over and I baked Junie a delicious banana cake with banana icing which she loved. She LOVES food, have I mentioned that?

Margaret brought all the raspberries from her garden, and she gave us 7 raspberry plants as well! I can't wait to have our own raspberry patch next year. Our little plants already made some berries this year, tiny as the plants are.
And as I've said before, I will be posting videos soon. My connection is slow, so it's harder to get the movies uploaded.

Juniper, in her beautiful birthday dress from Grandaddy and Jammy!

A day at 6 mile beach

2009-09-14T09:54:00.003-07:00

Jerry et al to the rescue!

2009-09-01T23:40:00.006-07:00

So this may not be that exciting to some, but, well, here out at Hall Siding it was a nail biting, meow filled weekend.
A few days ago, a neighbor and her dog stopped by and the dog ended up chasing a cat up a tree behind our house. I heard it happen, but didn't realize truly what was going on, and chalked it off to it being our cat running from the dog.
But later that night we heard crying. We (Richard, Aloka and I) didn't even really take notice until the second day when we realized the crying was not our cat. It was going on continuously and was not coming from the ground.
Richard looked behind our house and saw it, a blur of a cat, waaaaay up high in a big tree we have out back, close to 100 feet tall. The cat was probably 20 feet up it. We figured it would come down soon. But over the day the crying continued, and next day we went out, the cat was now probably 50 or 60 up the tree. Josh was over, and he climbed up and up. But he got to a point where it wasn't safe enough, and the cat was just too high so he came back down.
Next day, now day three, we were all really starting to worry. Besides the fact that we had been listening to meowling for 3 days straight. I couldn't believe this kitty cat was not coming down at all.
Neighbors were starting to take notice, as the meowing could be heard for quite a distance, and I had sent an email to everyone asking if anyone was missing a cat. Nope. No one missing this cat. We were out back for the better part of day 3, calling, coaxing, shaking the food dish. Our neighbors Jerry and Linda walked over and joined in. The cat started getting more excited hearing all the commotion, meowing louder.
Meanwhile, I had left three messages for the fire department, 5 messages for local arborists (one who advertised "pet rescues", ha!), the SPCA, and a local animal communicator. Okay, not the last one...but a lot of messages. As of today, only one person called back, the pet rescue-er. So much for the firemen. Low priority, I guess.
Finally, Jerry, our neighbor and now local hero, got a huge ladder (twice the size of Richards) and ropes and stuff, and climbed up the tree!

Yup, that's Jerry... the black dot over halfway up that tree...

Linda, surprisingly calm and seemingly used to seeing Jerry in daring situations

The on-ground cheering commitee

He got all the way up to the cat, who had then jumped into a skinnier tree standing right next to the original one. This made the rescue a bit more awkward, but Jerry got her. Richard had also climbed up the tree after Jerry with a big net, and handed it to Jerry, who was then able to transport the cat. Rescue accomplished!!

Boo hoo, sniff! We were all so relieved.

This is one gorgeous (and lucky) cat.

How sweet is that?

We weren't sure what we would get when we got that cat down. Was it ferocious? Rabid? (that was Richards fear)
Nope, it was so sweet and mellow. Siamese mixed with tabby, long hair, skinny and hungry, but other than that, very chill. It let Aloka haul it around, we brought it inside and it made itself right at home, even purring when Aloka manhandled it.
I wished we could have kept it, but our cat would've freaked out if she had known what stowaway we had in her domain (luckily she was still outside at this point). Not to mention, this cat had some serious shedding issues, holy cow. It was in our house for less than an hour and I'm still finding long white fur everywhere.
We brought it over to Jerry and Linda's who were excited about fostering her and maybe even keeping her if no one claimed her. But the moment we arrived in the driveway, she heard their dog Sampson. She clawed me, flying out of my arms and headed straight for the trees! ACK. I dove after her, Aloka was quicker and grabbed her by the tail, and then I grabbed her scruff and chucked her back into the van. Dang.
It all ended up good though, Linda spoke with another neighbor, Marika, who had no pets and agreed to foster her. She also had a suspicion that she knew the cat and had seen her around her land before.
Yup, turns out, the cat knows Marika too. As soon as I pulled up, Ms. Kitty (Aloka had now named her Daisy at this point) jumped out, seemed to almost 'greet' Marika, ate a little food, drank a little water, and took a little cat nap in the shade of her guest house, like she owned the place. Marika thinks she belongs to an unknowing neighbor of hers. Unknowing and oblivious to the fact that their cat almost became dehydrated cat-on-a-stick coyote food.

And here's a couple videos:

Cute cute cute kids!

2009-08-29T14:35:00.003-07:00

Life is hard for this baby!

Marketfest 09

2009-08-22T15:07:00.006-07:00

Last night was the last MarketFest of the summer. The Kootenay Hipnotics (our Tribal Bellydance troupe) performed the opening act. It was lots of fun as always!

"Who paints the rainbows" starring Aloka and Mama

2009-08-01T18:30:00.004-07:00

A: "My Dada knows everything"

M: "He doesn't know everything but he knows a lot"

A: "Well, that's true, cuz he doesn't know who paints the rainbows!"

M: "Who paints the rainbows?"

A: "Fairies, the sun, the rain, and Superman."

M: "Superman??"

A: "Well, no, but that's what I tell boys so they'll believe me."

Aloka's Pirate Party "Arrrrrr me hearties!"

2009-08-01T10:14:00.016-07:00

So, after we had the 'family' birthday on her actual birthday, as promised, we had a pirate party for Aloka and her friends. It was an insane amount of work, and I swear I could liken it to planning a wedding, but it was worth it.
I wrote out little rhyming clues for the treasure hunt, and made them look old by printing an old font on paper, and then soaking the paper in coffee. I let it dry and then painted lemon juice on it and burned the paper with a heat gun. They looked so cool!

Before

After

The other clues

The first clue was a letter that Captain GoldenEye had left for the kids, stuck on a tree at 'base camp'

And here I am reading the letter from Captian GoldenEye. The children were mesmarized! Is it real??

And by the way, my eye patch was awesome! It was a sunglass lense with a skull on it, so I could see easily (with the exception of a slight skull obstruction)

We used an old chest of Richards and made loot bags out of old burlap coffee bean bags (free from the coffee shop!) and filled them with river rocks we collected and spray painted gold. They looked so cool, even as Richard was painting them, he was gleefully saying how much he would've loved them when he was a kid. They were really fun. We also stuck stickers, bubbles, tattoos, and little cookies wrapped in tinfoil (silver dollars) in the bags along with some other glass "jewels" of different colours.

Painting gold nuggets

Josh made swords, and the children covered them with foil and decorated them with glitter and jewels, also so fun!
I told the kids to come wearing a white shirt, and then we tied a red sash around each childs waist and a black bandanna around their heads. Arrrrrr!

Pirate Josh manning the pirate sword craft table

The swords

They were adorable running around the park looking for the clues. They found the last clue in a bottle washed up ashore, and the bottle had an 'old' treasure map in it showing where the treasure was buried.

Richard had buried it in the sand on the beach so all the kids dug it out and carried it back to the base camp.

Running across the beach to find the "X" marks the spot. They are way off in the distance there, hard to spot.

The children digging up the buried treasure chest

Everyone carrying the treasure chest back to base camp

There is all but one burlap loot bag left in the chest (there were 15 total i think) and this is Aloka opening hers. You can also see a smattering of gold still left in the chest. I think the kids thought it was real gold, ha ha!

Holding up the treasure map!

Larissa and I were up until 2am the night before, getting ready for the party. I baked two cakes and put them on blue posterboard to look like islands. I covered them with graham cracker "sand" and stuck Aloka's playmobil all over the cakes, they turned out great. The cake was dairy, egg and wheat free to accomodate our guests with allergies, but of course, no one even knew! I love that kind of baking! It was a chocolate cake with a raspberry custard filling and almond-vanilla buttercream, yummmmmmmy.

birthday girl

And here are some of our party guests. We had about 15 kids.

Andreas

Sienna, Jazmyn, Abi, and Aloka

Aloka and Jazmyn

Abi holding a water balloon!

Pax and Kelton, eating cake

Junie's friend, Zaira

Opening presents

And some of us grownups

Richard and Junie

My friend Sarah with Zaira, and me

Me, making a slightly weird face

Pirate Josh

Nick and Nile

My sister, Larissa

Aloka's birthday!

2009-07-19T16:37:00.008-07:00

Today is Aloka's birthday! She's 6! I baked cupcakes that turned out DELICIOUS!! They're some of my favourites that I've ever made. They are Vanilla cupcakes with lemon icing and a strawberry custard filling, totally dairy free, though you'd never know! But they are light and fresh and we each (me, Josh, Aloka and Larissa) ate two without feeling yuck afterward. so yum. enough about the cupcakes.

Aloka is having a blast, and my sister Larissa is visiting. We went to Lakeside Park yesterday, and first hit the beach, then moved up to the grassy area where we picnic-ed, ate popsicles and played. Aloka and Larissa also went for a trolley ride. It was a beautiful and fabulous day!
I still have tons of videos and a few events that have happened from the past couple months, so stay tuned!

Chillin' on the beach; we love Nelson... beautiful mountains AND sandy beaches!

Then we moved up to the park!

My own eyes

2009-07-11T10:08:00.002-07:00

Aloka: "Hey mama? Why do people say 'I saw it with my very own eyes'? Cuz how could they see with someone else's eyes, anyway?"

Beautiful Aloka

2009-07-06T20:25:00.003-07:00

She did her hair herself believe it or not!

Where's Junie?

2009-07-06T12:48:00.001-07:00

This is months old and she's much bigger now, but she sure is cute! Just had to post it!

time to catch up!

2009-07-03T10:25:00.008-07:00

It's been busy busy busy here! Josh moved into a wonderful new home. He's renting out a room in a family friendly home with another mama and her two children; A 7 year old girl, and a 22mo old boy, Sienna and Tavian. Aloka loves Sienna and they seem to get along great. There is an amazing fenced yard with beautiful gardens, a tramp, and a hammock.

Josh's room is sunny and looks out onto the back gardens. There's a big playroom downstairs (it's a 3 level home), Josh's room is on the main floor, and the mama (Amy) and two kids are upstairs.
The house is also only 6 blocks from lakeside park! And Josh has a phone again. We're all happy!

I'm behind in posting about some of the events in Aloka's life. She lost her first tooth about a month ago. And we got a new van. We love it.

So below i'm posting some great photos of Aloka's 'birthday celebration' at school. Her class celebrated all the summer birthdays together. The Waldorf birthday celebration is a beautiful one. The teacher tells the story of the children being little angels that have played together since the beginning of time, then one day they are called down to Earth, where they travel across the rainbow bridge and into the waiting arms of their chosen parents. The parents place a crown of gold on their head and Debbie (Aloka's teacher) gives the child a wrapped gift. The child then lights a little candle next to some baby pictures of thenselves, and the parents each tell a little story from the childs first year in this life.
And gradually all the little angels come down from the heavens, and cross the rainbow bridge and the friends are all reunited to play together again!
It's so sweet and there were lots of weepy parents! After the ceremony, we had birthday cake and yummy potluck food and Aloka's teachers made delicious nachos for everyone as well, even some with non-dairy cheese for the children with allergies.

There are a million photos... the outside ones are after the ceremony when we all went outside to eat and play.

As we were leaving the school grounds we saw two deer on the road out!

By the way, Josh told me anyone who wants to, can subscribe to the RSS feed to this blog, and then you'll automatically be notified when there's a new post. Enjoy!

Crossing the rainbow bridge

Aloka is holding her gift, a felted gnome!

The baby photo table

The resemblance is uncanny

And of course, I made cupcakes!

The cake is upside-down in the photo, but it's sun made out of mango! It was beautiful, made by Jayden's mom!

Aloka, Kaliana, and Pax, holding up their gnomes

King Josh

Bouncing Junie Bug

2009-06-17T23:38:00.002-07:00

Aloka's class photos

2009-06-05T19:36:00.004-07:00

How cute is this??

and here are another of her class, and the whole school photo:

If you click on them, you'll enlarge them a bit.

Homemade Tea! A post from Josh...

2009-05-29T09:31:00.004-07:00

Today Aloka and I (Josh) collected the new growth off of spruce trees to make our own tea.
The tea made from the new growth buds tastes delicious and has a delicate lemon flavor and is loaded with vitamin c.
I've been teaching aloka about gathering her own food from local sources and she is very keen to collect and learn about local plants and what is edible.
We used a large burdock leaf to hold our gatherings and we also collected burdock root for our stirfry.
You have to twist the buds off and then use your finger to pinch the sheath off.
We brewed the tea in japanese tea mugs my parents gave me.
As you can see aloka is is the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world and we had a wonderful time together!
Attached are photos of the process.

Aloka's hair cut from months ago...

2009-05-09T18:07:00.004-07:00

Whoops, I had forgotten all about these pics! Aloka had sooo much fun getting her hair done. The stylist even gave her lipstick! I've decided to take her for each birthday to get done up. She just loved it!

Such a beauty!

Aloka's Easter day

2009-05-09T17:38:00.005-07:00

After the egg hunt (which was on a friday), came Easter Sunday. Aloka had left out a note for the Easter bunny asking if it was a boy or girl, and some carrots.

Can you read what the bunny wrote back?

She then found eggs hidden everywhere, hard-boiled and chocolate ones. Then she noticed a little mini-basket on the dining table with some dark chocolate eggs and a clue!

I read the clues to her and she just loved going on the scavenger hunt for her basket.
She finally found it out in the addition (the new part of the house that's still being built)

She loved her basket! The bunny had brought her treats and a chocolate bunny, stickers, Hello Kitty tattoos, and a little squirrel stuffy. She is such a treat saver, she still has the chocolate bunny, and most of her jelly beans!
I got in trouble because I had eaten one of her chocolate eggs and a handful of her jelly beans one day when she wasn't home. She noticed exactly what was missing of course, and was sad.

I felt horrible, so the next day, the Easter Bunny apparently had come (presumably overnight) and replenished her stash! She was tickled!

After a long fun Easter day, she said "Mama, you didn't get me any Easter present!" HA! Someday she'll find out my secret...

A super fun Easter Party!

2009-04-27T15:55:00.005-07:00

Aloka told me a couple weeks before Easter that she wanted to have a party with an egg hunt. It turned out to be a great success and the weather was terrific!
To eliminate the competitive nature of egg hunts, every child was allowed to find 10 eggs plus three chocolate eggs each.
Josh and Richard hid them discretely in a beautiful park in Nelson, called Gyro Park.

Chris holding Junie-bug

Egg hunting!

It was a potluck and my contribution was cupcakes with little jelly bean bird nests.

"Out of the mouths of babes"

2009-04-23T19:21:00.006-07:00

This is what the total stranger said to me after Aloka leaned over to her in a waiting room that Aloka, Richard and I were in., and said "he has really stinky toots". Luckily the lady had a sense of humour as well as having her own kids and grand kids. So poor Richard was only slightly totally embarrassed.

Another incident happened as well, last month, where I received a business call but I wasn't home. Richard was in the bathroom (unlucky for him) and Aloka answered the phone because she loves to do that these days.
The lady on the phone asked for me, and Aloka politely told her I wasn't home right now, just Richard is. So the lady asked to speak with him to leave a message. Aloka said "he can't come to the phone right now. He's pooping."

Boy I bet she made that lady's day!

Strawberry Princess is no longer

2009-04-10T18:20:00.004-07:00

Aloka's hampster died a few days ago. We're not sure how or why... we have many different speculations, old age not being one of them. It was very odd. Richard found her during the day when I had gone into town to pick up Aloka from Josh's house. The transition day is always a little hard for her so I decided to wait until the next day to tell her. Richard moved her cage out to the wood shed outside and she came home just before bedtime and didn't notice the cage being gone which i was glad about. It would have been bad timing as she was having some anxiety about going back to school after a long weekend. (She's still having some separation anxiety). That night, I came to bed late, around 11:30pm, and she heard me and woke up, half dazed, to go potty. The lights were almost all turned off, and out of the blue Aloka mumbles "where's Strawberry?" and then, "outside?" I couldn't believe it and had no idea how to answer her, so I didn't.

The next morning she had no recollection of it, and I decided to tell her after school. She was sad, but not as much as I expected, at least not right away. I think she's still processing it. Later that day she said "Oh well, I guess we can give her away now... although no one would probably want a dead hampster" I thought this was pretty funny and I told Josh. Aloka overheard me and shouted "Mom! It isn't funny, my hampster died!!" I felt pretty bad, but I think she's processing it well. We miss Strawberry...

Junie babble

2009-03-22T12:27:00.001-07:00

Aloka's tea party

2009-03-22T12:05:00.003-07:00

Aloka and I had a little tea party a couple weeks ago, and made little miniature plates of food. She loved it, and it was fun and easy. I put little currants on top of cheerios, slices of cheese, cookie cutter flower shaped sandwiches and little french toast triangles left over from breakfast. She loved it!

Winter fun

2009-03-08T10:04:00.004-07:00

Aloka and I built a cool snow cave last week. Spring is definitely coming but we're still getting some snowfall. The days are sunny and balmy feeling, things are starting to melt, but it's still very cold at night (20's). So this snowcave was perfect to build in the wet icy snow.

Aloka also went snowmobiling with Richard on our land. Behind the land is an abandoned old BNR railroad that goes for hundreds of miles and attracts snowmobilers and cross-country skiers alike (including us!)
Someone gave him this 30 year old snowmobile, and I joke that it looks like it came straight out of an old James Bond movie!

air poop

2009-03-03T16:24:00.003-08:00

"mama, there's poop on the mirror"

"What? What do you mean 'poop'??"

"it's air poop"

"What's 'air poop'?"

"Dust!"

Just a quick little Junie video

2009-02-27T08:25:00.001-08:00

Valentines Day!

2009-02-08T23:19:00.004-08:00

Valentines Day is my favourite holiday. Maybe it's all the pinks and reds...maybe it's the symbolic heart, and the love it represents. It could be the fond memories of making and decorating our "Valentines Boxes" at school, and come the end of the day, finding it full of Valentines and candies from teachers and peers. But if I only needed one reason alone...Chocolate!
And not just any yummy chocolate... on Valentines morning, I'd wake up, and there on my night stand would be a lovely small heart-shaped basket filled with Valentines goodies and chocolates of all kinds!
My mother was so good with holidays, but she always made Valentines Day so special.

I, of course, want Aloka to share my love for it. And at the same time I now look at it from a Mama's perspective; how can I create this for her without inundating her with sweets (as the remnants of Christmas goodies still linger in the house)!

It's all a balance I suppose. This year, she'll be getting a small but pretty red metal bucket full of some of her faves. I also bought her a (pink) CD player to listen to her own music on. I was just going to give it to her, but then Richard suggested it be a Valentines Day gift. She'll love it!

Today we made chocolate chip cookies and Valentines. What fun!

These are wax paper hearts that we grated pink, orange and red crayon on. We'll hang them in our window!

A Valentine for a little girl in her class

Aloka's Polly Pockets

2009-01-20T16:02:00.004-08:00

Aloka was pretending she was a big hungry monster, and her polly pockets were dinner. The picture says it all!

quick little video

2009-01-12T10:13:00.001-08:00

Aloka took this little clip when i was in the other room. I had no idea until i found it on my camera!

Last week I took her for her first real haircut (not by me, by someone who actually knows what they're doing!). She got it cut, curled and even got a little makeup. She was totally enthralled and loved it, and she looked so cute! I'll post some pictures up when I get them from Josh. I hadn't brought my camera with me, so we went to his house after the appointment and he took a couple pictures of her curls!

more snow.... more more more snow

2009-01-03T22:07:00.002-08:00

So, just so you can see this.... look at the amount of snow we've gotten only a couple weeks later!
For some reason these pics are darker. Also some more pictures of Aloka's favorite pasttime... playing with Richared's glasses!

Aloka goes sledding

2008-12-30T12:48:00.006-08:00

Aloka loves the snow! She has no fear and is already excited to start snowboarding!

And here's a bunch more pictures:

This is our home... We live in the left side (the window is lit up compared to the right side). Richard has built the right side and extended the roof all last summer. believe it or not, this is a trailer! he also built the addition on the left side which will be a mud room. The space we're living in is 500 sq ft, but probably by next spring to summer we'll be able to move in to the new side also, which will increase the total to 1000 sq ft, yay! we'll have two bedrooms, 2 bath, a larger kitchen, living room and dining room. what luxury!

some semi recent pics...

2008-12-28T22:17:00.003-08:00

Just a few random pics...some more recent ones plus some videos coming soon!

Snow play with Avie

2008-12-13T20:37:00.003-08:00

Aloka's friend Avie came over with her dad, Tony. They cut down a Christmas tree from our land and then we went for a walk on the decommissioned Burlington Northern railroad tracks behind our house that span for miles and miles.
It was very snowy and we got about a foot of snow over the past few days since then. Aloka has been so excited to be playing in the snow!
And on a side note, she says the funniest things sometimes, it cracks me up. Yesterday morning she was playing, and she took some scotch tape and said, "mama, pretend this was my pet". She paused and I started to crack up, with her following. She's a riot!

Cute video!

2008-12-07T22:45:00.000-08:00

some new pics

2008-12-07T11:45:00.004-08:00

Little Junie Bug

Silly goose always steals Richard's glasses...

I get Aloka these 'bath colors' at the co-op, she loves them and they're all natural! After she took her bath she looked at the tub and said "look! There's a cat ring!" (Does anyone remember the Cat In The Hat? :) The whole story is how to dispose of the ring in the tub the cat leaves after a bath. It eventually ends up all over the snow.)

Last night I got an adorable picture of the girls in slumber, their arms entertwined. So sweet!

Bellydancing this summer

2008-11-18T21:13:00.004-08:00

This is a blog from someone i don't know... one of the girls in the belly dance troupe found it. I guess people were pretty amazed by my belly! Little did they know, I was only 7 months pregnant in this performance, ha ha!

to see it, click here

And, here are some fun pics of our new little person, Juniper Willow Rose Baker!

Oh dear...

2008-11-03T14:41:00.002-08:00

I just noticed all the "lyme disease" ads by google, ha! When I have two hands again i'll post about our Halloween, hopefully tonight!

Sick of the tick?

2008-11-03T14:30:00.005-08:00

So sorry to leave you staring at a tick fot two months! And for the record, we did get the head out it was determined. Ticks have surprisingly small heads apparently (thanks Josh!)
So I'm only typing with one hand because I'm nursing our new baby, Juniper Bella Rose Baker! She was born on Sept. 8th, at 12:10pm after a 2.5 hour labor. It went so fast I almost can't call it a "labor". I couldn't really get into that laborland groove... it just started and then blammo, here's the baby!
She weighed 8lbs at birth with a pretty big head.

anyway, here are some pics of Aloka before her haircut... Josh took these. Some of you all may have seen them!

Aloka got a tick

2008-09-07T20:59:00.002-07:00

Aloka was complaining about having a bruise on her head today. Then tonight she felt her head and she said she had a bump there. I asked her if she hit her head today as I was feeling for the bump and I felt something hard and small, more like pimple size but more prominent. I have never had a tick nor seen one on someone, but I moved her hair away and sure enough there was a little grey oval thing which I could only assume was a tick. I called Richard in to the bedroom (Aloka was just going to bed when we found this) and we got out our trusty "Smart Medicine For a Healthier Child" book and read about ticks.
Aloka was completely freaked out. She already has a thing about bugs. They really creep her out, and she's heard about lice so she has a small fear of bugs in hair. She was scared, and kept asking if we'd ever get it out. It was luckily pretty quick of a surgery!
I rubbed some thick vitamin E oil on the tick, and Richard heated up some tweezers after a few minutes of letting it not get any air, and he gently pulled it out. Neither one of us have any experience with ticks but knew we didn't want to leave the head in. I wasn't sure tick heads were so small, but Josh said they're teeny when I called to consult with him.
Anyone with tick experience, feel free to reassure me this head is still attached!

a bunch of pics from the summer

2008-09-01T11:32:00.007-07:00

I'm finally on a satellite connection so it's a little faster and a LOT more expensive, alas! I'm just uploading the cool little video of Josh and Aloka actually catching tadpoles, which we just found out are bullfrogs!! Josh is going to put them in a larger aquarium and we're hoping they survive. So far, they're doing great! Josh read a little about them online to determine that bullfrogs is indeed what they are, when he was concerned because our frogs didn't have any signs of legs yet and still have their tails, where other friends of ours who caught frogs in the same pond have already started growing their legs. Bullfrogs apparanely take a year to grow legs and drop tails. Here's the video:

And:
Presenting Aloka the photographer:

And here are a few from Kokanee Creek Provincial Park at a friends birthday. The last picture is a mama duck with her babies!

And this is from when we went for a trolley at Lakeside Park in July:

Berries we picked on our land (this was just the beginning of a bazillion strawberries, huckleberries, and saskatoon berries, aka service berries!)
And these are just a couple photos from my birthday/rock moving party:

My sister Larissa came out for our birthdays!

and a quick update, i'm still pregnant. 40 weeks tomorrow, but i told the baby to hang on in there so i could take Aloka to her first day of school starting on my due date!

Also, i don't think i blogged about this so there's some folk who don't know i cut my hand pretty bad 3 weeks ago. i fell while holding a glass, and crushed the glass with my right hand, had to go to ER for stitches and it's been a difficult recovery because we use our hands for lots of things as i've discovered. It was a gross nasty cut, and i was going to put a picture up of the injury but i decided to spare people! anyway, it's healing, and i got the stiches out a week ago. i'm loosing a chunk of my skin (the cut was on the fleshy part of my palm below my thumb) but once it scabs and comes off i can finally get my hand wet again! i can't wait. More later!

a Father's Day blog

2008-08-01T13:14:00.004-07:00

I'm so behind in my posting that I realized I never got up these wonderful Father's Day pictures. Josh, I and Aloka went to a beautiful pond called "Grohman Narrows" and had a little picnic, then collected tadpoles!

We brought a jar, and Josh caught 4 tadpoles with his hands! It was so much fun, and he still has them at his house. They are growing and happy and Aloka gets to watch them as the metamorphosis into frogs! The still don't even have their little legs yet but they're getting much bigger! I'll put this post up with the photos, but check back in a couple days for a really cool video too, it will just take me a bit to upload the movie.

Bellydance at Marketfest

2008-07-28T17:15:00.003-07:00

Well, I did my first performance as a troupe member! It was really fun, and since we're a professional Bellydance troupe, we get paid for it too.
I love doing Tribal Bellydance, it's an empowering and strong form of dance for women, much different than the showy Egyptian Oriental style of bellydance that's more for performance.

It is great for pregnant women, and originated with women doing it for other women, particularly women in labor. There is another troupe member who is also pregnant, but not quite as far a long.

Waiting to enter...

Aloka is the one in the red shirt, watching the performance... there were people surrounding us!

Presenting our beautiful daughter!

2008-07-04T15:58:00.003-07:00

Isn't she cute?? She got her face painted a couple weeks ago at the Saturday Market here in town.

Happy Canada Day everyone! July 1st is Canada Day (the birthday of the country) here, for you American family and friends. We had a GREAT time! Aloka and I walked over to where all the festivities are at Lakeside Park. It's a very family friendly event, and people had been there all day. We got there around 7pm, the fireworks are over the lake at 10pm and I was waffling about whether or not to keep Aloka up. We ended up staying, and Richard got off work at 8pm and walked over to the park to join in. We also invited Josh and Ellie, but they couldn't make it unfortunately. We weren't sure where we should sit to watch fireworks and wanted to be able to get out of the parking lot fast. We had parked in front of the soccer field at the park, so we decided at 9:40pm to go drive somewhere where we could see the fireworks from our car and then just zip home. When we got to our car, we realized we were in the perfect spot, so we just threw down a blanket and sat on the field in front of our car. Low and behold, the fireworks were literally being set of right in front of us on the other side of the field! So we got the best view in the entire town. Aloka snuggled on my lap, and we watched the beautiful show. Then we got into our car and easily got out and were home within 20 minutes! It was perfect!

On our way to Lakeside Park to hang out with friends while waiting for the fireworks to start. Aloka of course saw a heap of her friends there. Pretty much everyone in Nelson it seems like!

Just yesterday, we went for a walk and found a huge wild strawberry patch (High Alpine Strawberries) right next to our house. There are zillions of strawberries, but these were the first ones to ripen! They were soooo delicious, and Aloka ate pretty much all of them!

I have so much more to post, i'm incredibly behind. I go on maternity leave on July 13th, so after that I'll have more time to blog hopefully! I have lots of fun photos of Aloka and Josh collecting tadpoles from a pond we went to on Father's Day, plus Birthday parties galore she's been attending. Coming soon!

working for pennies

2008-06-24T11:19:00.003-07:00

I don't know why i'm putting this in blog format. i have 3 weeks to go before i can go on maternity leave, and today is Aloka's big end of school year picnic for all the families. I got a phone call at work from Josh saying he forgot Aloka needs fairy wings because the children are all doing a play for the parents.
i raced up to her school with a pair of fairy wings i bought from the store where i unfortunately have to be working today.
there were happy parents and children everywhere, i saw Aloka getting ready with all her friends for the play, tons of parents basking in the sun out in the yard where the play is, everyone bringing lots of food. and i have to go back to work so i can earn my $12 that i get per hour instead of being with Aloka. Then Josh shows up with his new girlfriend, yay. So they get to be there for Aloka, but not me. I feel great today.

wow, i'm back!

2008-06-02T18:37:00.004-07:00

I can't believe Blogger worked this time! I've been trying to post (via my slooow dialup connection) but i kept getting a weird blank page, every time i tried. so i gave up for a while. but now it's working again! i'm going to see how it is uploading photos. if it's painful, well, i'm not sure how often i'll post, but we'll see.
so where do i start? maybe i'll just do a couple little posts at a time, because i do have a lot of photos! we've finally moved about a month ago, which was, well, to summarize, a total nightmare. But finally being moved it's great. I packed up my entire house singlehandedly, and Richard and Josh both helped move everything. Josh came over one day and helped move the big furniture, and then Richard did all the other runs of zillions of boxes and other furniture.

My landlady ended up being a complete psychopath, (really...not joking here) as in, calling me 3 times at 6:30am and once at 12:30am just to see if i had an extension cord she was looking for. She was calling me telling me how great i was, and then in the same sentence saying what a mess i left everything. This is delusional, the place was spotless. I even have videos. Then she would start crying. Honestly, crazy... but after twice of threatening to call the police, i think she's leaving me alone finally. What a weird experience.

It's been a very stressful pregnancy i must say. Even being here now, I'm more broke than i've ever been in my life. I'm perpetually overdrawn, and my paychecks just keep bringing me back to a zero balance. It's nuts! But i have confidence this too shall pass and things will improve.

Aloka loves it out here. We've been going on lots of walks, often right after dinner, and she just loves it. She collects rocks, jumps in puddles, examines all sorts of rodent holes and burrows... we found a little stream yesterday, it was beautiful, and she had so much fun just pulling up grass and throwing it in the stream and watching it float away. There's also a huge rock yard across the road from us. They have beautiful flagstone and granite that they sell by the pallete to folks on the coast. At the rock yard there's an enormous sand pile that Aloka loves playing in, it's so fun! It makes me want to order a dump truck load of sand for our house. Who needs a sandbox??

Another fun discovery is the thousands (and i mean thousands!) of wild strawberries growing everywhere here, on our land and everywhere you look pretty much. They are covered in flowers, so we'll being seeing fruit soon! We also have a ton of wild blueberries on our land. Such a different life than living in the town.
The downside is that it's 10km or 15km from town and soooo expensive on gas. I don't know how to afford that part of things. i'm probably putting $100 to $150 in gas in my car every month. And you Americans who are complaining about gas prices right now? We pay $137 per litre!! Thats around $5.50 per gallon!! And it's supposed to go up to $1.40-$1.45 this summer, crazy!

Anyway, that's all i have time to type right now, but i'll try to post some photos. I'll start with some cute photos of a goat farm that Aloka went to on a school field trip. Josh went too. Next post i'll try out the photos from May Day which was wonderful!

Sophie's birthday

2008-04-29T14:12:00.003-07:00

Aloka went to Sophie's birthday last week and had a great time. It was at the place they both go to for gymnastics, the Glaciar Gymnastics Club. Josh and I were both there, so here's a couple photos from it!
I don't have much time to write, because i'm moving today and tomorrow, and after today I will on dial-up, so i'm trying to get this posted before my new connection becomes painfully slow!

long time no blog...

2008-04-22T11:06:00.002-07:00

i'm still here! Life has been the most insane it's ever been for me this month, year. i'm not sure how i'm keeping it together. I've had a horrific cold preventing me from sleeping most nights for the past two weeks, and i'm supposed to be moved out of this house by May 1st. I'm not sure if i've even mentioned that. In fact there's a whole lot i haven't mentioned come to think of it. Here's the story: My landlady decided she wants to move back in to her house after assuring me this would be a long term rental. I can't find a place in town anywhere to rent, so it seems Aloka and I are moving up to Richards house, which is a 500 sq ft trailer 20 minutes out of town. I'm working 5 days a week, trying to pack, and oh yeah, i'm also 5 months pregnant by the way. I'm feeling so sick, so homeless, so ungrounded, and I just want this to pass and settle. I'm so broke, trying to start my business, but there just seems to be so many obstacles. For instance today i found out that i'm not going to be able to get high-speed internet out at his house. Dial up it is i guess. just one more thing. I can't seem to stop crying today, they sent me home from work because i'm so sick, and i have a doctors appt. at 1:45pm, hopefully they'll give me something so i can sleep. the stuffiness has been keeping me up at nights.

So that's my life in a nutshell right now. I'm going to keep doing posts, but i've decided that instead of people always having to check and see if i've updated, i'll send out an email to you all whenever i have a new blog entry. that way you'll always know right when it goes up and know when not to bother checking.

we're hanging in there, Josh has been very emotionally supportive, though he's certainly having his trails and tribulations with earning enough too. He's got a girlfriend which is nice, and she's wonderful with Aloka, which is important to me. Right now we're trying to figure out how to pay Aloka's $1400 dental bill from last fall (which is now down to $1000, thanks cousin Julia!!) and she's complaining about more tooth pain. When will life get easier, i wonder?

hopefully my next update will be more uplifting.

Easter!

2008-03-31T17:41:00.005-07:00

I decided to try dyeing eggs using vegetables. they didn't get very dark in colour, but i found out later i was supposed to let them soak in the liquid for 8 hours. oh well, it was still fun!
We had a fun Easter; Josh came over and we did an egg hunt and a little basket scavenger hunt inside, because it was SNOWING. ugh. we had some really sunny nice warm weeks, and now we're getting this weird cold front that doesn't seem to be going away. I can't WAIT till the warm weather is here!

She's such a 4 year old!

And here are some videos of her scavenger hunt leading to the basket! We had a lot of fun!

Aloka loved opening up her basket. There was a cool prism, lots of neat little stones and treasures, lots of stickers, bubbles, and of course treats, like jelly beans, a few chocolate eggs, lots of carob covered almonds ; ) and Aloka's favourite, dried Blueberries.
Here are also some pictures of the eggs we dyed, and some really cool ones Josh did with Aloka... Josh should win some awards!!

Above, the big thing is a bird, and there's a little person next to it

This one above is a mermaid...

A princess with red lipstick, of course....

Our vegetable dyed ones are in the back right there... and the dark brown ones on the left are the onion skin dyed ones!! I was joking that we couldn't just bought brown eggs and save some onions!

The most exciting hour of my life

2008-03-19T18:50:00.003-07:00

Well, I can think of others actually.... but this was definitely up there.

I decided to get some lotto scratch tickets, because i'm so broke right now. It's not something I do very often; the last time was around Xmas because I put them in everyone's stocking.

But I just had a really good feeling about it. So I got to my car and scratched of my tickets. I won 7$ which pretty much paid for the tickets, and then I got to one called "King of Cards" which had 6 different little "card" games on it. As I was scratching, I realized I had won one of them. I hadn't scratched off the Prize for it yet. So I started scratching off the prize, first I saw a 5, then a 50, then 500 and then 5000!! Holy crap... I was reeling!!! I was in total disbelief that I might have actually won $5000, after sitting in my car processing this for a half hour, I called Josh from my cell. I told him, and he was so excited for me!! I kept looking at the ticket to make sure I wasn't misreading it. Then I went in to tell Richard who had been working at the store. He too, was thrilled for me!
By now an hour had passed, my face had a perma-grin on it and was thinking of everyone I was going to call. I got back to my car, sat down and looked at my ticket again, when I realized I had missed something. My heart sank, and again I found myself looking at it over and over but this time in disbelief that it wasn't actually a winning ticket after all. It was a clever and very hard to catch trick of the eye, but I had totally missed it. I wasn't a winner. Goodbye $5000 that was Oh SO Needed!!
But it was a fun hour...

A sweet post

2008-03-10T00:00:00.002-07:00

I'm posting a sweet post to check out on Melissa's blog... i thought you fans of Aloka would enjoy it! Nile and Aloka can just be so cute together. Especially as they've gotten older, and the age difference narrows....

One of my favorite pictures of Aloka

2008-03-04T21:24:00.002-08:00

And speaking of 3 feet of snow....

2008-02-23T16:25:00.004-08:00

Walkway up to our house

Our driveway

Our driveway again

I thought I'd post some pictures of the snow over the past month or so here.

We've actually seemed to have turned a corner here, and spring is very much in the air now. A few weeks ago I noticed the Canada Geese have returned, and I'm hearing all kinds of birds chirping outside in the mornings as we wake up. And of course, most of all, it's been warm!! The snow is melting, the sun shines almost every day, radiating warmth and happy feelings all around.

The seasons are so distinctive here, I just love it. No more of those loooong Vashon winters that seemed to end in June and Start again in September.

And then there's Richards house, yikes!

Here is a video we took when we were up there skiing a few weeks ago.... well, Aloka was skiing!

Adventures in Vancouver!

2008-02-13T16:22:00.010-08:00

Aloka and I went to Vancouver last weekend to visit my Dad and Stepmom, Jeanne! They very generously got us both tickets to come out and see them and to be there for my Dad's 60th birthday. My sister Katie and brother Winston were also there, so it was a nice reunion. Kate and Winston haven't seen Aloka since she was just an infant, it had been a while!

It was a short trip...we got there on Saturday afternoon, and had to leave Monday afternoon so I could be back at work for the following day. But it was nice, and Aloka got to spend some nice time with her relatives.
Among other things, she played on this weird playground contraption at the apartment building where Dad and Jeanne live. It was strange and kind of nice to be in rain, instead of the 3 feet of snow in my yard back home!
Here is a video of my sister Kate singing a beautiful song with goofy Aloka playing and so excited to be there!

And here's a video of my cutie pie brother Winston and my Dad being obnoxiously funny at the end:

On Sunday night we had a nice dinner party, and Jeanne, Kate and Winston made a yummy Mexican taco feast. I made the desert, which was Lava Cake (rich chocolate cake with a gooey runny center) topped with a Blackberry Compote (a la Kate) and Vanilla ice cream. It was pure chocolate decadence!!

Now, the main reason I'm calling this trip an adventure was, yes, it was exciting to go to a new big city we hadn't been to for a while, but MAINLY the adventure lies in the insane airline flight. All the locals here in Nelson think I'm making a big deal out of nothing, I know, but landing in a mountain town in really crappy weather is INSANE. It would take heavy bribery and massive and painful arm twisting for me to do it again in the winter.

Going out was fine....besides the fact that there was a weather advisory so we wouldn't know if our flight would actually go until we were at the airport waiting to board it. It was slightly stressful just because I had to pack, get all the food ready and drive an hour knowing we might just have to turn around and go back home. But we remained optimistic.
Arriving at the Trail "airport" was a sight to behold. It also operates as a flight club, and is a teeny, slightly smelly building that has some chairs and a dingy counter to get your tickets.
Now all you folks in the States can appreciate the fact that there is ZERO security! The only thing they did even remotely secure was check my ID to verify that yes, I had a ticket.
The plane arrived, a little 19 seater with no bathroom and not really a cockpit. Just, "the front of the plane where the pilots sit".
Ok, that's a little exaggeration, but seriously, they are just sitting there up in the front and you can see everything they're doing. Pretty cool. No overhead bins, but the pilot offered to throw my bag in the "closet" when I got on, the closet being an alcove behind the captains seat.

In hindsight, I should have just checked my bag, because what that entails is them taking your bag from you and throwing it in the "trunk" of the plane, a large compartment. Then when you get off, they just hand you your bags. And getting on and off the plane of course consists of walking out onto the tarmac and up the stairs onto the plane. But I'm sure you were already picturing that. A 19 seat propeller plane can't exactly have a jet bridge.
The flight was a little bumpy and a lot noisy, but was a fun adventure especially for Aloka. And it's also a very short 1 hour flight. Here are two videos, I took the first and Aloka took the second!

Now, the return wasn't so glamorous. When Dad brought us to the Vancouver airport (the little teeny South terminal where the little teeny planes live) they announced that there is a weather advisory and there is a strong possibility that they may get to Trail, not be able to land, and have to return back to Vancouver.
Eeeek!! I'm trying to imagine which is worse; having to return back to Vancouver, or having to land in maybe-we-should-cancel-the-flight weather! Good Lord.
The ticket agent also casually tells me that they compare landing in Trail like trying to land on the moon. He also said that there's about a 50% cancellation rate. "The MOON?" I'm still thinking. Did I agree to this?

We board the plane, (again no worries about security here, Dad could practically walk us to the plane) and take our seats. Aloka is already digging in to her bag of food, and treats that Jeanne and I made for her.
So, the one nice announcement is that there is a tailwind and will get us there in 50 minutes. Woo hoo! Some good news.

So far, the flight is bumpless, even despite taking off on a rainy foggy day in Vancouver. No mountains, no problem!
As we're approaching, the captain comes on the load speaker, which we could barely hear because the propellers were so loud, and says he thinks they can land but it will take some "maneuvering".
Ack!!! Maneuvering???? No, no, no, I'm thinking to myself. I must disembark! Help.
We're starting our decent, and once more, "Wade" our pilot (he has a huge sticker saying "Wade" on his pilot cap) turns around and says "Does anyone need a cab??" One lady raises her arm, and our buddy Wade calls the cab for her apparently.

Our decent begins. Except it was more of a plummet-sideways-out-of-the-sky type of thingy. We turned, we twisted, we pummeled, we practically somersaulted onto the run way. The lady in front of me was clutching her arm rest the whole time, but later told me when we were on the ground that "Wade" had a smile on his face the whole time so she knew we were probably going to be ok.

Aloka, in childlike wonder and living ever so in the moment, shouts (as were flying sideways towards the ground at 500 mph) COOL!!! MAMA I CAN SEE THE GROUND!!! I look out the window, and wish I hadn't... No, that was a view I'd rather not see from the angle I was at. But I manage to scrape a response to her, like "isn't that neat??" all the while, grateful that there are at least barf bags on the flight, should I need it.

We finally touched down, slid sideways a little, bouncing on the wheels a little, and then, thankfully stabilized and started slowing down.
I contemplated whether or not I had actual trauma from the flight, or if I would just get over it. I'm still not totally sure, but apparently, people get used to these landings. "That's life in the Kootenay's!" as everyone here keeps saying.
My friend Kara says she's probably done this landing 90 times. That would be 89 more times that I care to participate in, thank you very much.

I'm changing the title of this blog post to: "Only The Brave Shall Visit" or, "We'll Pick You Up In Spokane!"

More Aloka art - the painting series

2008-02-06T21:03:00.000-08:00

"School"

"Aloka"

"The Bride"

Aloka draws still life

2008-01-28T17:24:00.000-08:00

Josh has this little metal bird statue that Aloka drew:

Blogging? What's blogging again?

2008-01-23T11:47:00.000-08:00

Wow, I keep going too long without posting. The past week has been hard. Aloka and Josh came down with a horrible flu. Aloka was with Josh when they came down with it, and Aloka had a fever for 7 days off and on. It looked like she was getting better on Day 5, with her fever finally gone, but then the next day she had 102.4 and I took her to the doctor (which because it was Sunday, ended up being the Emergency Room.
She has a lung infection, as it turns out. Just the very beginnings of Pneumonia. So now, she's on anti-biotics, and feeling a million times better! I'm giving her insane amounts of probiotic, and will continue after her 10 day dose is finished.
We had a funny conversation today in the car about good and bad bacteria. Anti-biotics vs. Pro-biotics. She totally gets it.
And on a little side note, last night we were hanging out in her room, and she found a piece of dental floss on the ground. She picked it up and said "ewwwww! Already-teethed dental floss"! I had a good laugh!

Aloka the snowflake

2008-01-09T21:54:00.000-08:00

Aloka's Waldorf school had put on a really cute little play and Aloka was a little snowflake! she was so cute!
The other little girl in the pictures is Sky. She lives about 2 blocks from us and Aloka has a lot of fun with her! Starseed (Aloka's school) is just across the street from our house, and Sky's house is on the other side of Starseed, so it's a great setup.

This is Sheilagh, Aloka's teacher, lighting the Christmas tree candles which were so nostalgic for me from the days of living in Germany! I love real candles on the tree!
Here's Aloka and Sky dancing as little snowflakes:

And Aloka et al singing Rudolph!

I gave Josh and Aloka matching long underwear. They were so cute!

The Christmas Train!

2007-12-26T22:55:00.000-08:00

I have a million zillion things to post about with all the festivities going on around here, but i'll just do it all a bit at a time. Things are busy with work, but thankfully slowing down finally. Ah, the joys of the retail toy industry during Xmas! I must have been overheard a hundred times in these last few weeks saying "I feel like one of Santa's elves", since my job is to manage the website and do the orders and shipping.

Just before Christmas, the train came into town. It was quite an exciting and HUGE event; I couldn't believe how many people were there at Lakeside Park just to see the xmas train. It had to be in the thousands. There was live music. roasted chestnuts, hot cocoa. popcorn... and best of all, it's a fundraiser for the food banks. They travel all across Canada earning money and food donations for the needy.

And of course, Aloka also got some fun playtime at the park in the pitch black amongst about 30 other children, all sliding down icy slides in their snowsuits, shooting out and off at 100mph!

Goodbye Christmas Train!

Cookies

2007-12-19T21:52:00.000-08:00

A more exciting post is on it's way in a couple days about the Christmas Train that came through town, but for now, here are some cookies I made tonight! They are a brown sugar cookie with toasted pecans and a caramel glaze, aka Praline Cookies! Wish I could eat one, but I'm off sugar and gluten. I'm making about 4 other kinds too, for tins for Xmas gifts. Aloka helped me so much with these. She loves baking!

Lots and lots and lots of snow!

2007-12-08T09:45:00.000-08:00

Well, it finally came, at long last. Everyone was waiting for it; the day's were getting progressively colder and colder. The mornings would sometimes have a few flurry's. We all knew it was coming, but boy when it finally did, it REALLY did! In this below video, you can hear me say it's the 2nd time i shoveled the driveway that day! this was only a couple hours after i had just shoveled it. Richard got a foot in one day up at his house.
The snow here is the best champagne powder as far as skiing goes. It's light, and fluffy.

BUT, then only a couple days later it warmed up a bit and rained!! Ugh! Can you imagine what that did to the roads? The day it was raining I heard two people describe it as "gross". My boss, Judy, said "Rain in the winter is just disgusting!" and I agree. It was slushy, messy and icy. Now it's chilled up again and my driveway is clear but very icy!
Here is a video of the first big snowfall!

Gingerbread and fun

2007-12-04T00:02:00.000-08:00

My dad and Jeanne were here a few weeks ago, and i'm lamenting that i didn't get more photos. Dad got a gingerbread house kit for Aloka, and the two of them built it together. Well, actually Richard did the construction of it (he's good at building houses, real or gingerbread apparently!), and then Dad and Aloka decorated it after it set.
The Martha Stewart in me screamed inwardly that I should be making it from scratch, but i quickly subdued her and enjoyed the absence of tasks needed to be done for this fun project!

I will be posting some pictures and a movie tomorrow or the next day of the massive huge amount of snow we got the other day. Winter came with a giant explosion of snow, starting on Josh's birthday, the 26th. Aloka has already tobogganed and I think we're going snowshoeing this weekend! fun fun fun!

More Halloween stuff!

2007-11-18T23:22:00.001-08:00

Jeez, it's taken me a while to get these posted. Once again, my excuse is that I'm so darn busy I can't see straight, but it's a good thing too. Josh is working on my website now, and I'm SO excited to be running my own gig. I'm going to need to be working like I am now for a while because of course, I couldn't live off my business for a least a year or two, until it starts generating a good revenue stream .
I'm excited to be carrying my cousin Julia's awesome dolls that she makes *hi Julia!* and I think they will do really well. I have some waiting to be put up on the website, and I have to hide them all from Aloka because she cannot keep her hands off them! Josh is also just finishing up her website so once it's done, there will be a link to it on this blog.

My dad and stepmom, Jeanne just visited this weekend, and we all had a great time. It was a whirlwind, but wonderful nonetheless, and Aloka loved waking them up in the mornings (they slept at my house). Jim and Lynn, we hope you come soon too! Aloka misses you terribly and wants to crawl into your bed at 7am to wake you up too!

And now for some fun pics from Halloween. I dressed up as I-don't-know-what, Retro future Austin Powers chic or something. I threw my old Ant hat and costume that we made a few years back onto Richard, who by the way is so not into dressing up for Halloween. So it was pretty cute that he put it on for me. We took Aloka trick or treating just a little bit, and Richard's daughter Emily also took her out for a half an hour or so. She got to pick out a small pile of candy that she wanted, and I told her the rest was going over to Josh's house. It did go over to his house, but she forgot all about it, and Josh got some yummy sugary treats all to himself! So it worked out well, she wasn't uncontrollable and only had a strong sweet tooth for a few days afterwards, and it's now under control again. She has such a tendency to get so hooked on sweets if they are around.
I was hoping Josh would take her out for some trick or treating too, but he had a crazy deadline, and was busy working.

And speaking of sweets, I am totally off of sugar and gluten! I stopped eating gluten at the suggestion of my cousin Cara, and I can't believe how much better my belly feels. It did make me loose 5 pounds which I didn't really want to loose, but oh well to that i guess! I'm trying to compensate by eating tons and tons of ghee, my new addiction! ;) It's so good! It tastes like popcorn butter.
Ok, enough typing, here are some pics. The first batch (and a couple movies) are from Aloka's Waldorf school. Sheilagh, Aloka's teacher, put on a Halloween Market Place, which was like a little village with all sorts of different market booths (parent's dressed up). The children got "money" from the bank (chestnuts) and could go around and buy things at the different booths. There was a baker, and hat lady, a miller, a candle maker, a wizard who tended a fire and you could buy a wish rock and throw it in to the fire and it would spark. it was very magical and fun. Aloka didn't want to leave!

Her purchases, and some chestnut money still jingling around in her basket

The Baker

Aloka and Claire (the unicorn)

She wished she could be a real fairy she later told Josh in secret!

Here's another great video. The world through Aloka's eyes, notice how long she lingers on things that interest here, ie. treats!

And then later that night Aloka and Andrea (our roomate) both dressed up as Cinderella!

This is Andrea and her friend, in the second costume of the evening, Wayne and Garth!

And Richard, borrowing my Ant costume!

Kinda young to start working, but hey, it was her decision!

2007-11-11T20:55:00.000-08:00

I just found this old photo when I was sifting through some past online photos! She was just over one!

Pumpkin carving with Aloka!

2007-11-02T00:23:00.000-07:00

Ok, this post will be a little more upbeat than the last dreary one. Fall is still completely beautiful here, with lots of sunshine and yesterday was even a warm one. Leaves are still beautiful colours and crunchy everywhere I go.
Winter is starting to tease us with the occasional morning snow flurry, and up at Richards house, it's already starting to stick to the ground (he lives right next to the ski hill).
So Halloween has come and gone. It was quite the festive and exciting holiday for us, and it seemed to creep up on me without me realizing it, and then all of a sudden it was in one day and I had a hundred things to do!

Aloka and I went over to Richard's house and we carved some pumpkins with Beth and Emily.
Richard didn't do one. He was busy puttering around getting his land ready for winter. He gets a TON of snow, and everything is completely covered by about 5 feet of snow and unable to be uncovered until spring.

Aloka had SO much fun. She did some carving and lots of drawing and playing. While we were all busy working on our designs, Aloka decided to make everyone pumpkin soup! She found a pot full of hot water on Richard's wood stove (to humidify the air) and added a whole bunch of pumpkin innards (mostly fleshy chunks of pumpkin, she avoided the stringy stuff!), then she found the salt and added some of that, and stirred it up.
We're so busy with our carving and she's humming to herself as she's cooking, no one realizing what she's doing! Then she got 5 little bowls, spoons, and a ladle and served everyone up a bowl. Soon we noticed we each had a bowl of steaming hot pumpkin soup sitting on the table, one for everyone!
We all actually did eat some of it, first dressing it with a little tamari. She's such a cook!

Our pumpkins turned out great, and I got a video of Beth and Aloka.

Next post will be a fun one of Halloween, costumes and all!

This is the one Aloka and I did

Beth did this one

Emily's is on the far left.

I'm overwhelmed and just need to bitch

2007-10-26T23:33:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted because I'm so busy I can't even find time to be online. I'm now juggling a 5-6 days a week job, parenting a four year old, and running a household. I know I'll get used to it eventually, and it wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't so dang broke.

I'm so sick and tired of my credit card/debit card being declined. It happens every time I go to the store lately, so I've been avoiding grocery shopping. I'm eating everything that's left in the freezer, and the nights I don't have Aloka I'm eating crackers and peanut butter left over from my salad making days, which I don't think I posted about coming bitterly and abruptly to an end.
I'm sure I'll get my feet under me at some point, but for right now, it feels like everything is falling apart.

Ever since Josh moved, we had to pull all (over 100) boxes out of his basement from the house he had to leave, and go through everything. We divided stuff and I have to say I ended up with the bulk of it after he got the things he wanted for his new house. Now I have boxes filling my front porch, basement, and living room, all needing to be gone through and gotten rid of. There's really not much in there that either of us even want anymore, and a lot of it is just piles of paperwork and crap.
I had to go through 8 giant rubbermaid bins full of pantry food.
Originally, I thought we'd only be without our things for a couple months at most when we first moved, so i brought all our dry goods, thinking how expensive it would be to replace it all. Well, it turns out it was in storage for 1.5 years, so all the food went bad/stale/rancid. We had lots of jars full of flours, and grains, even boxes of crackers.

So my house has been extremely not uplifting, which is probably also why I've been so grumpy lately. I finally did some rearranging of mine and Aloka's bedrooms last night after she was in bed and it feels a little better. I am going to work all this weekend on trying to go through boxes and clean up this house.
My poor roommate. She has been amazingly tolerant through all this!

Going to bed, g'night.

Happy Thanksgiving, and blissful Autumn!

2007-10-14T21:18:00.000-07:00

It's so dang beautiful here in the fall!! It's been warm, sunny, and there's a crisp in the air as they say. The crunchy leaves are beautiful shades of golden, red and orange. I went on a walk during lunch last week, and just right off of Baker Street (the main drag) there was a tantalizing hazelnut tree dropping hazelnuts all over the sidewalk. I crunched through the golden leaves looking at the abundant harvest on the ground.
And speaking of abundant harvest, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving up at Naomi's house with Richard, his daughters and ex-wife Naomi and her boyfriend Ralph. Aloka had so much fun with the girls, I hardly saw her for the first two hours we were there I think.

Here is a video of the feast we contributed. My roomate Andrea is also in this video preparing her own feast that she brought to a potluck as well. We love Andrea, and she is so amazing with Aloka too which is a bonus!

This photo below is of a bunch of Philo Tartlett shells I filled with two different kinds of pudding. Dark chocolate pudding, and a Hazelnut Gianduja pudding. I topped them with vanilla laced fresh whip cream and grated chocolate (respective to the flavour it was on) once we were at Naomi's. They were so addictive!

And speaking of fall harvest.... We have an enormous plum tree in our backyard. The funny thing though, is that while everyone else's plums were in full harvest season a couple weeks ago, these ones were yucky, bitter, sour and astringent. They were falling off the tree like crazy, but just tasted gross!

I had pretty much given up on them, as plum season is now coming to a close, but Andrea had a friend come over and tell us that sometimes plums just need a good chill before they become sweet. We tasted them again, and sure enough they are decadent!!
You can imagine the scene that followed! Andrea and I have now each made 10 jars of plum jam, and that was even before the massive harvest we had today!

Today, Josh came over and we pulled the tarp off of Aloka's sandbox and positioned it just right. Then Josh grabbed a branch and shook it a little and down pelted zillions of plums!
All and all we ended up with close to 50 liters of plums, just over 15 gallons!

Josh also helped me hook up the freezer in my basement and tomorrow I'm going to be pitting a whole lot of plums! I'm going to make another 20 jars of jam, some pies to freeze, some plum syrup, and I will freeze a bunch of chopped up plums for use on porridge and whatever else. Josh is going to dry about 5 litres in his dehydrator for me too.

I sent him home with about 7 litres of his own plums, 3 jars of jam AND and whole bunch of hazelnuts off our hazelnut tree! It makes complete sense to have Thanksgiving during the harvest time of year. I love autumn!

Below are the pictures and videos of our giant plum harvest. Here is the plum tree; Giant, un-pruned and pretty much ignored from an arbourists viewpoint:

The plums!

Aloka with a Dahlia Andrea picked on Thanksgiving Day:

I'm so tired yawn

2007-10-07T00:23:00.000-07:00

I'm actually going to go to bed now, but I just wanted to post since it's been over a week now.
I started my new job last week, and it's wiping me out! I think it's because my body just isn't used to standing for 6 hours straight in one spot. This is due to me processing web orders and responding to emails, but my desk is very high, so a chair wouldn't really work.
Anyway, my back hurts, my legs hurt, my bum hurts. Yesterday I discovered that I'm having some sciatic nerve thing. Shooting pain all up and down my left side.
Today I was "on the floor" basically doing sales. Welcoming, helping, ringing people up, etc. I had to smile for 6 hours straight in other words, whilst standing the whole time. Which thing is more tiring, smiling or standing, I don't know.

This email sounds like just one big huge whine. Well, it feels good to whine sometimes. If Aloka gets to do it *all* the time, I get to do it sometimes too, like at 12:30am all alone sitting at my computer, where she will never hear me.

And don't get me wrong, I really do love this job. As far as entry level jobs that pay really bad go, this one is great! The people are awesome (I only have 3 other coworkers), I can do a little work from home (like a few hours a week or so) managing the website, and I get to sell toys and children's products! It's great training for my own website, which I'm very excited about now, and it feels even more attainable now than ever.

Tomorrow we're having Thanksgiving dinner (even though Thanksgiving is officially on Monday) with Richard and children and ex-wife and ex-wife fiance. Sounds interesting?
I'd like to have American Thanksgiving with Josh and Aloka, and maybe some American friends, especially since it's near Josh's bday.
So, this is what I'm contributing tomorrow to the feast:
Apple Pie, Pumpkin Pie, two kinds of Phylo tartlett shells filled each with Dark Chocolate Mousse or Milk Chocolate Hazelnut Mousse (Gianduja), topped with fresh whipped cream and chocolate shavings, Baked Yams with Rosemary and Olive Oil, and lastly my favourite yummy pleasure lately, Hot Artichoke Dip served with sliced vegetables and french bread. This is so dang good, words cannot describe. I'm going to post the recipe which comes from my very extremely good friend Kara:

Hot Artichoke Dip

1 14oz can Artichokes (in water), drained
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
1 cup mayonnaise
1 Tbl green onion, finely minced
1 Tbl fresh parsley
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 tsp fresh lemon juice
sea salt to taste
1 or 2 vine ripened tomatoes, sliced thin

Combine all ingredients and place in a shallow oven-proof dish. Top with the sliced tomatoes.
Bake at 350F (180C) for 10-15 minutesor until heated through. Serve hot. Try not to drool on it.

Before I retire to my super comfy and warm bed (it's beckoning me), I must post some photos of Aloka and her block creations from a couple weeks ago. They were so cool, I had to capture it on film:

Ok, Josh actually did this one.

Yes, she really did this tall thingie. She loves going up up up.

Garages Sales and (more) Cupcakes

2007-09-28T00:24:00.000-07:00

We had a garage sale last weekend. We had it at Josh's house, out on the lawn, and Aloka, Beth, Emily, their mom Naomi, Josh and I were all there. It was a great shindig and I made a whopping $70 but it was worth it to just get rid of tons of stuff. I couldn't believe how fast a gigantic box full of OLD and expired vitamins and other misc. bathroom junk went as soon as i put it out with "FREE" written on it! It was crazy!
One that gave me a Josh a enormous belly laugh was the fact that someone took the used enema bag from that box. People are so funny!
Here's a video that's almost too much to post, and I can't figure out how to edit the end (literally and figuratively), but it was a funny sight so I'm putting it up anyway. It might come down very shortly, but at least family can see it for now!

After the garage sale Naomi took the rest of our stuff to the thrift store, and believe it or not, we only had 2 small boxes of stuff left, it was great.
Then Beth and Emily came over to my house with Aloka and I, and we hung out for the rest of the day. The girls all played with the "photo booth" software on the computer, and then Beth and I made cupcakes while Emily and Aloka played.
The cupcakes we made were a double chocolate cupcake (chocolate cake with chocolate chips) filled with a raspberry ganache, dipped in chocolate ganache, iced with chocolate buttercream and topped with a fondant decoration. I let Beth at it as far as rolling and making the fondant shapes and icing and decorating, so these are all her work.
This one that I'm holding I did.
Beth and Emily took home about 24 cupcakes, and I was told that they were all gone within a couple days, eek! It makes my teeth hurt just thinking about it. Oh, to be 16 again!
Aloka has such a great time with them, and they all adore each other.
Below are some of the 150 (yes, it crashed my computer!) photos the girls took:

And there were also a bunch of silly ones they did with all the different effects the Mac has to offer.

Here's one Aloka took of herself:

Salmon "spying" at the park

2007-09-18T13:02:00.001-07:00

Last week Josh and Aloka went to Kokanee Creek Provincial Park and watched the salmon spawn. They are starting to taper off in these movies and pics. I guess a week earlier and it was fin to fin with salmon!

More cupcakes...

2007-09-14T23:57:00.000-07:00

Brought these to a little cafe in Crescent Valley (20 minutes outside of town) These are a rich chocolate cupcake with a butter pecan truffle filling and a chocolate ganache icing (vegan):

And I'm also starting to do cookies, because believe it or not, i actually make more per cookie than i do per truffle and not much less than a truffle cake. crazy.

Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (vegan):

Also, some other good news is that I got a job at a toy and children's gear store in town called Mountain Baby.

I'll be working around 30 hours a week and I start on October 1st. I'll be doing web orders and inventory, receiving, and front desk clerk (working the floor). There are only 3 other employees, and it's a lovely place to work. They are looking for someone with the same passion I have for running a toy store business, and are hoping to do profit sharing and collaborative work down the road, so it's something I feel lucky to have gotten into. Pay is very low, but lots of room to grow! The woman that owns it is an amazing business woman, and also, coincidentally, the La Leche League leader who helped me with weaning a la hamster.

Shaheeda and Tara are here!

2007-09-14T23:28:00.000-07:00

Our good friend and midwife Shaheeda came out to visit a couple days ago and is staying for two weeks. She is working on her immigration papers and we can't wait for her to move up here. She is telling people she is trying to go somewhere warmer than Vashon for vacation right now, so why not Canada!? Yes, warm it *is* here. September is many folks' favorite month in Nelson. It's not too hot, but still warm enough to be on the beaches, around 75 to 80F, or 25 to 30C. Simply beautiful! We went to a pretty waterfall yesterday. In the spring, it's deafening from all the snowmelt, but right now it's a gentle trickle.
Aloka is naked under the big boulder and Tara (8 yrs) is the one in red:

And here are a couple cute photos of Aloka and I from tonight!

And a few of Richard (wearing my sunglasses in the second two) for all you friends and family who've been wondering.